Review
This is the closest approximation of a traditional novel Angus Wilson has ever done and it appears at a time when it will be most welcome. The publishers compare it "if only to suggest a contrast" to The Constant Nymph and The Forsyte Saga - both titles mentioned in the book itself. Actually Wilson's closest counterpart is Priestley, although he relies to a greater degree on intellect, less on sentiment. No Laughing Matter, which follows six children, sisters and brothers, over fifty years, invites to some extent a dispersion of interest. Then some of Wilson's insets - plays given by the children and their Game - while enabling him to be the superb mimic that he is, also impede the action. However its long, large panorama, all detailed through his expert eye for symptomatic phenomena, does project many identifiable characters and events of the world between wars and after ... The six children, from precocious Marcus to surrogate mother Gladys, are the offspring of an improvident father and a self-indulgent mother living in a disorderly household; many of the opening scenes are spent in family exchanges which inevitably reduce to inessentials. However the novel picks up momentum when the young Matthews grow up to divergent destinies: Gladys spends twenty years as the mistress of an unfaithful, cocky confidence man; Rupert becomes an actor; Quentin a leftist political Journalist; Sukey, so "limited and conventional," the mother of several children and wife of a school headmaster; Marcus is a homosexual; and Margaret writes. At one point in a review she is faulted as neither hating nor loving human beings, which to some extent is true of all of Mr. Wilson's novels where interest is not necessarily equated with involvement. However this book, so representative, so recognizable, eminent and currently expendable virtues, is a substantial achievement. (Kirkus Reviews)
